


deadpan

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [33]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: ADHD Tony Stark, Betty Ross and Tony Stark are siblings separated by not having been born to the same parents, Bucky trolls the internet, Everyone is friends, Fluff, Gen, neuroatypical character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-25
Updated: 2014-11-25
Packaged: 2018-02-26 23:30:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2670431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Barnes," [Tony] announces with almost malicious glee, "is <i>trolling</i> the <i>entire internet</i>."</p>
            </blockquote>





	deadpan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celeloriel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeloriel/gifts), [staranise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/gifts).



> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it. 
> 
> This fic was because I realized somehow Bucky's internet exploits had not yet come to light. And that needed to be fixed.

Betty ignores the first three emails from Tony on the basis that she's _busy_ and, between projects as he is, Tony's as bored and as annoying as a four year old at a symphony. Actually, he's exactly like a four-year-old at a symphony: fidgety, whiny, frequently hissed at, louder than anyone else would like him to be, and prone to getting bored and falling asleep when you'd rather he didn't, but you're still relieved when he does, because it means he _shuts up_. And she is actually _working_ , work that matters, and she doesn't have time for that. 

Then he starts with the intercom. 

At first she does her best to ignore that, too. But Tony Stark is _good_ at being annoying, and has more or less no pride in certain areas. He pretty quickly resorts to just repeating _Betty Betty Betty Betty Betty_ over and over and _over_ to get her attention, because he is a _child_ , and in the end she snaps, "For the love of God Anthony Stark, _what?_ " 

For just a second there's silence, and then - _"Wow,"_ says Tony's voice from the speaker, " _You managed to sound almost exactly like my mother there. That's a bit creepy. Well done. But you totally need to come up here and look what I just found."_

Betty taps her stylus on the desk for a few seconds before she settles on, "I'm busy, Tony. No." It's not all of what she'd like to say. She'd like to say _what the fuck is wrong with you_ , or _are you insane_ , or _I am seriously going to throw you off your own tower_ , but the first he'll feel the need to give her the list, the second he'll give her general speculation, and she's actually not physically capable of throwing his obnoxious self off the Tower, and he'll point that out. 

So she stays with brevity being the soul of wit. Or at least, the soul of not-getting-dragged-into-a-game-with-Tony-Stark. 

Normally, that would actually stymie him: a flat "no", which almost nobody but she and Pepper ever give him, doesn't give Tony anything to work with; he tends to make a face and go away. But not this time. 

_"Elizabeth Ross,"_ Tony says, and his tone makes Betty preemptively rest her face on one hand, because that's his _I've got a sure-fire win for this argument already_ voice, which means she's not getting out of this so easily, _"do you have the slightest idea what time it is?"_

Bugger. Also damn. 

"Some time around eleven," she replies, but before she glances at the clock and swears a bit more internally. Didn't she set an alarm? Did she ignore it, or did she forget? God damn it - 

_"Try three in the afternoon,"_ Tony replies, more than a little smug. _"If you come up, have a sandwich and look at what I just found, I won't tell Bruce you skipped lunch."_

In absence of Tony's face to stare at in affronted disbelief, Betty looks at the monitor instead. It's more or less as good: JARVIS is everywhere in the building except the residential floors, and while she's threatened Tony with abrupt emasculation if he spies on her for no good reason, he tends to argue that talking to her isn't spying. 

"Did you just threaten to _tattle_ on me?" she demands, incredulous. 

_"Yep,"_ Tony replies, not even slightly ashamed. Of course he isn't ashamed. Some day, she really is going to push him off the landing platform. _"Seriously,"_ he adds, _"you're going to calcify at your desk. Get up here already."_

There's the very faint (and totally artificial) _click_ that says he's turned off the intercom. 

For the sake of her pride, Betty spends about two more minutes sitting right where she is, thinking up nasty names to call him. Then she glances at the computer's timepiece, winces at the numbers that do, in fact, say three-o-seven and pushes her chair back from her desk. 

"I'm stepping out," she tells her admin assistant who's sitting at her own desk just outside Betty's office. "If someone actually needs me JARVIS can find me."

 

"What the hell do you want, Tony?" Betty says, especially annoyed when _up here_ turns out to be Tony's almost-never-used office and what he wants to show her is on the damn internet, which means he could have just brought a tablet down, or even _emailed her a fucking link_ , and not bothered her so much. "I was working. I don't hang out in my office for _fun._ "

That he hands her a sandwich from the nicer cafe down the street, all wrapped up in paper, doesn't help because the minute she smells it she realize she's absolutely starving. "Bullshit," he says, as she takes it. "You're in your lab and office the way I'm in my workshop. You're not fooling anyone, and you're especially not fooling me." 

"God forbid," Betty says darkly. She repeats, "What the hell _do_ you want?"

Now Tony does at least look amused and maybe even delighted, so while it's guaranteed not to be worth it as such (where "it" is dragging her up here), at least he might genuinely think it is, and he might not just be looking for someone to entertain him. 

"Barnes," he announces with almost malicious glee, "is _trolling_ the _entire internet_. Well, okay," Tony corrects himself, as Betty stops with her sandwich halfway to her mouth and blinks at him, "a significant section of Instagram and a bunch of readers on Reddit and some news aggregate sites, but the point is, it's fucking hysterical, come and look at this." 

Betty takes a bite of the sandwich, but frowns at him. "Tony," she says, after she swallows, "maybe one word in ten you just said made any sense. James doesn't officially _exist_ yet, which makes it a bit hard to troll anyone." 

Tony crosses behind her and gently takes hold of her shoulders, steering her around to his desk. She wouldn't put up with that from most people, but she just rolls her eyes. "And," she adds, "don't you have some actual _work_ you could be doing? You know? _Before_ Pepper's threatening to move back to Malibu without you?"

"Whatever," Tony says, dismissively, " _look_ ," and he pushes her down into his seat. 

Since she's not going to get out of this without looking at whatever Tony's decided is so exciting - at least not without a nastier fight than she wants to have - Betty takes another bite to chew while she's looking and taps the work-surface to wake up the screen, making sure she looks put upon. 

And then she stops. And stares at the screen for a few beats, trying to make absolutely certain she's seeing what she thinks she's seeing. She tilts her head slightly one way, and then the other, frowns, readjusts her glasses, and looks again. 

And then says, "That's . . . Steve," and looks up to see Tony grinning - his actually, truly and genuinely delighted grin, which is rare. She glances back at the screen and hazards, "Helping someone fix their tire?" 

"Check the tag," Tony says. Betty glances down and reads, _#americaiseasilydistracted_. 

"This is James' account," Betty says, and it's not really a question, because if anyone else is taking random photos from a smart-phone at an angle that is clearly out of Steve and James' front window, they have a problem. All of them. Not least because Betty's pretty sure James would actually bend in his determination not to kill anyone for someone who broke into their suit. Well. Someone other than Natasha. She frowns; the user name is _seventygreensquare_ , which is more or less gibberish, and the name attached to it is just the username. "But it's not - " 

"Pseudonym," Tony says, still grinning. "Never answers comments, hotmail address, they've already got a program of mine to cloak their IP on the computer and then there's the tablet. There's never any comments but the tags, which are fucking fantastic usually. There's other stuff, too," Tony adds, waving one hand, "sunsets, random street scenes, basically I think anything that catches his eye. But what's trolling the whole internet are these," Tony goes to point to the screen, "because everyone thinks they're art." 

He catches Betty's blank look and elaborates, "I mean, photomanips, fakes. They think it's photoshop." Tony points at the screen. "He's taking random pictures of Steve and everyone who finds them thinks he's the best photomanipulator out there and they're a matched series. There have been three thousand comment flamewars," he continues, back to delighted, "over what 'the artist' is trying to say with a picture of Steve drinking a caramel latte. Massive fucking theories about commentaries on capitalism and globalization and the place of the United States in world-wide politics and iconography and propaganda all because that kid apparently likes to use his smart-phone camera and wanted to put it _somewhere_." 

He throws his arms open. "It's _fantastic._ I _love it._ "

Betty tries to assimilate that for a minute, and then says, "And you absolutely made a sock-puppet account and waded into the comments to make it worse, didn't you," giving him a definite sideways look. Tony grins at her again. 

Transferring the remains of her sandwich to one hand, Betty flicks back through some of the photos. All the ones of Steve were tagged _#america_ , and then the other tags counted as some kind of commentary. There's one of Steve working on the kitchen tagged with _#americaremodels_ and _#americasridiculous._ The one with Starbucks is tagged _#americaisanag_ and she can't help smiling, because that probably means they were there because James was having difficulty keeping his caloric intake up again. 

She wondered what the hell the audience made of that. Probably just contributed to the flame-war. 

It is kind of fantastic, but Betty's not about to encourage Tony. "Well, hopefully it's entertaining," she allows aloud. And she does, because frankly she's worried more than once - the agoraphobia doesn't show that much sign of letting up beyond what it has, which makes for a lot of time James spends inside, without much that's obvious to do. Being a genuine shut-in isn't good for anybody, it's just hard to avoid when you're handling what he does. So hopefully this is something. 

"After I found this," Tony tells her, completely unfazed by her muted reaction, "on a hunch I checked Wikipedia, where I discovered that the articles for Captain America, the Howling Commandos, Agent Carter, the SSR and early SHIELD, are all locked. Granted the SHIELD ones aren't entirely his fault," he allows, "I mean they were locked for months after Insight and they keep trying to unlock them and having to lock them again - but the talk pages for the other ones are hilarious." 

" . . . I bet they are," Betty says, shaking her head. 

 

It's about a half hour before Tony decides Betty's seen enough of his favourite threads (some of which are, admittedly, hilarious - at least when you know that the actual point of the picture is laughing at Steve's bed-head) and lets her go back to her office. And Betty has to admit she feels better for the break. 

When she sits down, she hesitates, and then downloads the Instagram app for her phone, digs out her long-dead account and looks up James' username. She ends up favouriting somewhere around a dozen, maybe a dozen and a half photos. A few of them, James ran through the black-and-white filter, or the sienna one. 

Betty thinks that at least some of the shots, the way they're framed - at least some of them at least sort of edge around the feeling of happiness. And hopes she's not deluding herself.


End file.
